Latest / The Death Of Journalism / Episode Eighty Three: Post-Debate Reactions From Zig

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Episode Eighty Three: Post-Debate Reactions From Zig · The Death Of Journalism

• 0:00
  Welcome to episode number eighty three of the Death of Journalism podcast. My name
• 0:04
  is John Zigler. I'm your host on today's show. The first Republican presidential
• 0:08
  debate finally happens and we have full analysis and once again Tucker Carlson, with
• 0:14
  the help of Elon Musk, comes to the aid of Donald Trump. I'm
• 0:19
  known as the Dutch Digital marketing Man. I'm a digital advertising SEO and email
• 0:24
  marketing specialist that also happens to be a big fan of John Ziegler and the
• 0:29
  Death of journalisten. Do you need help preaching your target audience. Let me
• 0:34
  help you develop the right messaging and confaded message in the best channels for your
• 0:38
  business. Please visit my website, the Dutch Digital marketing Man dot com and
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  let me help you tell your story. The website is the Dutch Digital marketing
• 0:49
  Man dot com. If you want to grow your business, Peter can help.
• 0:53
  That's the Dutch Digital marketing Man dot com. And hey, thanks for
• 0:58
  sponsoring the show. Want to begin episode eighty three of the podcast with a
• 1:00
  special thank you to our executive producer Mike Agavino, who got up super early
• 1:06
  to make sure that this episode could get out at a reasonable amount of time.
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  Normally we release early on Tuesday and Thursday mornings, but because the Republican
• 1:15
  debate was scheduled for Wednesday night, that required me to be able to record
• 1:23
  this podcast just after the debate and to be able to get it out at
• 1:26
  a decent time on Thursday. Mike had to go to extraordinary lens. So
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  we appreciate that and hopefully you'll be able to listen to this. Well,
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  it's still remotely relevant to the news cycle, and of course you know this
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  day and age being what it is, all sorts of things are probably happening
• 1:41
  on this very day when this is released, because this is the day Donald
• 1:45
  Trump is supposed to be officially arrested and have his mug shot, and maybe
• 1:49
  we find out what is true height and weight are all because of the charges
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  in Georgia. Maybe a little bit of that later on in the podcast.
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  But I want to begin with the Republican debate, which did not include Donald
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  Trump, and as well Trump's competing event with Tucker Carlson on Twitter. I
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  want to begin which is a couple thoughts on the whole concept of presidential debates
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  and like a lot of what has happened in the news media. You know,
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  the world has changed dramatically, especially in the post Trump era, and
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  the news media is very slow to understand or adjust to these changes. And
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  in the media we see this all the time. I mean, the media
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  landscape has fundamentally changed, and it seemingly is changing on a daily basis.
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  But there's still, at least to the mainstream news media, there's this magic
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  to the word debate, because it used to be that presidential debates, especially
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  general election presidential debates, were huge events that got massive audiences probably at the
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  time. You know, there was a time which they got bigger audiences than
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  the Super Bowl did, and they were massive communal events. Well, because
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  the media landscape has dramatically changed, we have so much fragmentation and because you
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  know, people are distracted by so many other things, and now we're in
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  a situation where, especially this early on in the primary process, the people
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  that are really interested in this are political junkies, and the non political junkies
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  now have so many other options to consume when it comes to media. I
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  mean, mind boggles how many different options people have that the number of people
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  actually watching a debate really does not warrant the amount of hype that the news
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  media and the cable news networks provide to debates. But they love debates because
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  they still think of them as having some magic. They also love the live
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  alleged drama of it. I mean, there is still the chance that someone's
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  career is going to implode live on television, so they love that. But
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  mostly the news media loves having a news story with a specific time and a
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  place that they can plan on being there. They can provide preview coverage and
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  hype coverage and postgame coverage. It's like a sporting event. And I've often
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  talked about how lazy the sports media is because the sports media, the vast
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  majority of what they cover are situations where they are told when the event's going
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  to be, where it's going to be. They're given a seat, they're
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  fed before the game, they're given notes after the game. I mean,
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  they are really not journalists, they're stenographers, and lazy people love this well.
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  The news media loves debates for this reason. They get to go to
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  a new city, get away from the kids and the wife for the husband,
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  and they get to pretend that this is a big event. And most
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  news media outlets will still pay for people to go. Now. I don't
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  know how much longer that's going to happen, because I happen to think that
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  this cycle could end up being the death of debates. Now that's another story
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  for another day. I made an appearance on News Nation to preview this debate
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  with Dan Abrams and bizarrely, Sean Spicer, the former Trump White House Press
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  secretary. The three of us did two segments on News Nation on Tuesday night,
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  the night before the debate, and one of the things we talked about,
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  or I talked about, was that I think that Trump not doing these
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  debates, and I don't think he's going to do these debates unless absolutely possibly
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  forced to by collapsing poll numbers. It's going to cause a situation where we
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  don't have general election debates. So we could be seeing the death of the
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  presidential debate right before our eyes. But in this particular situation, there was
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  obviously a lot of hype, and most of the time, in anything in
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  this day and age, with regard to the media hype, the hype is
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  unusually not backed up by any sort of substance or reality once the event happens,
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  and I would put this presidential debate in that category. There are a
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  few interesting things that happened. There were a couple of elements of this that
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  might be significant, but by and large and a lot of it was because
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  Trump was not there, and because of the way Trump was handled while not
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  being there. This was not a huge deal. This is not going to
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  be a world changer what happened in this Republican debate, and so I think
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  that's important to point out right up front. I also, before I get
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  to how the candidates did and the substance of the debate, I thought that
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  Fox News Channel did a terrible job here. Brett Bear and Martha McCallum were
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  the were the co hosts of the debate. They lost control several times.
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  But everything about this debate was awful. I mean, Trump has to be
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  laughing as ass off at a lot of this. I mean, I'm sure
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  that the ratings are not going to be all that great, especially in comparison
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  to normal presidential debates. I'm sure they're going to compare, you know,
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  this to twenty sixteen. This is not gonna do anything close to the first
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  debate in twenty sixteen, which had Donald Trump, you know, come in
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  like a raging bull and change the world. And I'm sure that Trump and
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  his people are going to make that comparison, and this was probably all part
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  of their plan, by the way, was to make that comparison. But
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  everything about this debate was wrong. There were far too many people on the
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  stage, which was always been one of my concerns. Eight people on that
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  stage as a joke, at least two of them had no business being there
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  whatsoever. I can understand six of them, and I'm being generous with regard
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  to Chris Christie, but so it should have been fewer people on the stage.
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  That's number one. But I cannot stand. I cannot stand this thing
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  that that debate models do. And you know, oftentimes I even tweeted this.
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  Fox News Channel was basically doing the work of the Biden reelection team at
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  times with some of the subject matters that they chose, specifically basically putting everyone
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  on the spot when it comes to whether global warming is a hoax and whether
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  not young voters or clueless, because that's their biggest concern is global warming,
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  climate change. But within that realm, that was one of the subjects where
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  the hosts on Fox News Channel tried to do this incredibly stupid, juvenile thing
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  where they try to get people to either raise their hands or not raise their
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  hands based upon their beliefs on a particular subject. And kudos to Rhyn De
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  Santis because in this particular situation he cut that off at the pass and I
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  think even said, this isn't a kindergarten class, you know, let's talk
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  about the issue, and that was the right way to do this, because
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  the raising hand thing is not just infantile, it's totally unfair because oftentimes you're
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  not one d sure even what the question is, what am I raising my
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  hand or not raising my hand? For? Oftentimes these subjects are not yes
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  or no, there's nuance. And unfortunately, part of the reason why they
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  do this ridiculousness with the hand raising is because they have too many people on
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  the damn stage and they're trying to save time. So I can't I mean,
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  the hand raising thing. It seems like a trap to me. And
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  in fact, the circumstances where the hand raising was even an issue, we're
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  all traps. One was the global warming climate change trap. The other was
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  a trap involving whether or not you would endorse Donald Trump should he be the
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  nominee after having been convicted of a crime. I actually think Ronda sand has
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  kind of got away, at least as of this taping, kind of got
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  away with a weird reaction to that hand raising. At first he didn't raise
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  his hand, then he kind of halfway raised his hand. And I was
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  really expecting that to kind of become an issue with Trump supporters. I have
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  not seen it become an issue as of yet because everyone got distracted immediately.
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  But I can't stand the hand raising bullshit. And I also can't stand this
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  whole idea that if you get named in someone's answer, you get an automatic
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  opportunity at rebuttal I mean because not really was the source of a lot of
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  the problems of how the Fox News moderators lost control, because who you got
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  to figure out, Okay, what does that count as in naming? How
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  many people did they name? And weirdly, the Santist wasn't getting named at
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  all. I would say that a lot of what I predicted was going to
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  happen in this debate did But one thing that did not happen was the Santist
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  was not the folk because of attack, which you might think was a good
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  thing if you're a de Santis supporter like me, except for the fact that
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  a large part of how you got to speak was by being mentioned or targeted
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  in some way, shape or form by somebody else, and nobody did that
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  with the Santis. Instead, it was, you know, the vague Obama
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  swammy. Although I think I'm gonna call him the fake Obama Swammy moving forward.
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  I really dropped the ball in the last episode when I announced that I
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  would refer to vague ramaswammy as of a vague Obama swammy. Now I'm gonna
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  go full Trump. I'm going to refer to him as the fake Obama Swammy.
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  And yes, the Obama swammy turned out to be prescient because of something
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  that happened in the debate, which I'll get to momentarily. But the reality
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  here is that these rules were stupid. They were arbitrarily enforced. The subject
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  matters most of them were dumb. They tried to pretend that Trump didn't exist
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  for the first almost hour of the debate, which was just ridiculous and like
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  we were in an alternative universe. I mean, eventually Brett bar used the
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  phrase that I have used, which is the elephant not in the room Donald
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  Trump. But then they quickly moved ahead without Donald Trump. They did a
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  segment on the whole issue of supporting him in the indictments, and then they
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  moved on and never mentioned him again. And I'm sorry, And I looked
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  there was a lot going on here, a lot of layers of this onion.
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  I mean, you know, you've got a former Fox News host star
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  and Tucker Carlson trying to put on a competing event with a guy, Donald
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  Trump, who's been ripping Fox News channel. Fox News Channel has a huge
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  not just a conflict of interest here, They've got a whole series of conflicts
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  of interest. And so you know, do they want to reward Trump for
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  pissing all over their own debate and robbing them of a huge rainnings night?
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  You know, I mean, it's my god, it's unbelievable what Fox News
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  Channels has endured because of Donald Trump. I mean, they lost hundreds and
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  hundreds of millions of dollars in the Dominion voting Systems lawsuit. I doubt the
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  insurance company paid for much of that. They lost Tucker Carlson indirectly because of
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  that. They've lost massive amounts of their audience all of this either directly or
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  indirectly because of them being tied to Donald Trump, and then Donald Trump rewards
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  them by crapping all over there their big debate event. And it seems as
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  if it was a very political decision by Fox and by the moderators to just
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  simply Okay, no one can claim we ignored Trump completely. We're just going
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  to do one short segment in the middle of the debate and we're gonna move
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  on. Well, I'm sorry, I don't think that that's based in reality.
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  I mean, I lothe Trump as much as anybody, but Trump is
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  clearly winning this race, and to pretend that he doesn't exist, I just
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  thought was almost as juvenile as the whole hand raising thing. So I hate
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  eighty to ninety percent of what these debates have now become in their effort to
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  try to make them more entertaining, especially without the star Donald Trump there.
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  But you know, it is what it is, and so I do think
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  that the audience is big enough to warrant special analysis, especially since we scheduled
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  our podcasting schedule around this. I am going to provide some detailed reaction to
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  what happened here. Now I mentioned the vake Obama swammy, And you know,
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  referring to a fake Obama swammy was rather depression because all of a sudden,
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  near the beginning of the debate, Obama Swammy literally quoted Barack Obama's two
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  thousand and four Democratic Convention speech referring to him and himself as a skinny kid
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  with a weird name. Now, when he said it, I did not
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  associate that with Obama's two thousand and four Democratic Convention speech. And for those
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  who don't remember, weren't a wife or weren't adults yet, that was really
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  the speech that launched Obama's political career. I mean, it's basically all he
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  ran on in two thousand and eight was the fact that he gave this this
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  really nice speech at the two thousand and four convention. That and his multi
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  ethnic racial background and you know whatever, his funny name turned out to be
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  a positive for him because he was exotic and new and exciting and young.
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  And that's why, with the media's help, he beat Hillary Clinton for the
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  two thousand and eight Democratic nomination. But it did feel weird. I mean,
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  if you had said to me, wow, Obama Swamy just voted Barack
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  Obama. I wouldn't have thought you were lying, but I certainly wasn't thinking
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  about that, and I wasn't sure about it. And then I saw people
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  online starting to reference this, and in fact, because I'd referred to the
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  fake Obama swamy in episode eighty two, I started people having people tweet at
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  me, Oh my god, you nailed it here. He is literally trying
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  to emulate Barack Obama by referring to himself as a skinny kid with a weird
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  name. And I thought, wow, that's pretty interesting. I wonder if
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  he At first, I wasn't not even a hundred percent sure if he did
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  it on purpose, but I think he must have done it on purpose,
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  which is weird. But then the strangest part of this was Chris Christie.
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  Almost immediately. It wasn't immediately, it was a few minutes later, Chris
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  Christie goes on the attack against the fake on this very issue and accuses him
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  of quoting Barack Obama was two thousand and four Democratic Convention speech. And I
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  gotta tell you, I have no evidence for this whatsoever. I'm just using
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  basic common sense and logic, and I don't know what the rules for this
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  debate were. I didn't see any evidence that anyone even had any notes or
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  was checking a cell phone. But I am to this moment completely flabbergasted as
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  to how Chris Christie had the confidence to know this is one thing to suspect.
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  I mean, like, let's pretend Chris Christie remembered two thousand and four
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  and Obama's convention speech and he thought to himself, boy, that that sounds
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  really familiar, skinny kid with a weird name, and decided to raise that
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  as an issue in the debate. You would at least you would at least
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  give yourself some room for retreat. If you were wrong, you would say,
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  boy, you sounded like Barack Obama there. You wouldn't be specific,
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  you know, paint yourself into a corner. But Christy was positive, which
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  to me made me feel like, did he have a cell phone on him
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  somewhere because someone text him from his campaign? Because if that didn't happen,
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  I'm very impressed. Not that it's a big deal. I'm just my spidy
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  senses are up on that now. Someone I texted with who is in this
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  business? I asked them and they asked me, is it possible that the
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  Vegas said this previously, and I'm unaware of it. I did a Twitter
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  search on it. Now It's difficult to do because now everything's based upon what
• 18:41
  he just said in the debate. Is it possible, I guess, But
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  I've not heard anything about the fake Obama Swamy quoting Barack Obama in the past,
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  nor what would there be any reason for him too. I mean,
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  the last thing you want to do, I guess. I mean, in
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  theory, if you're trying to appeal to Republican voters is to emulate Barack Obama.
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  Now, I do think that the evidence is pretty clear that Obama Swammy
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  did this on purpose, because his reaction to Chris Christie's attack was actually pretty
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  darn good, and it had to be at least somewhat anticipated, because Obama
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  Swammy said, back to Christy, does that mean you're gonna hug me and
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  help me win my election? Which is a reference to what happened in two
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  thousand and it was here and I can't remember for sure. It was a
• 19:32
  two thousand eight or twenty twelve Hurricane Sandy hits a New Jersey and uh and
• 19:38
  famously Chris Christie is kissing. Oh, it must have been two thousand twelve,
• 19:41
  because Obama was president at that point, so and so. But here
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  I just kind of proved my point here. I mean, as I'm thinking
• 19:49
  through it, you know, if I was at a debate, I wouldn't
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  have had the courage or the gumption to make a very specific claim there.
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  But you know, Christy literally gave hugs and kisses to President Obama as he
• 20:04
  came into visit after Hurricane Sandy in twenty twelve leading up to that election,
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  and you know, the fake Obama swammy was ready for that. Now it
• 20:15
  kind of got drowned out by all the crowd reaction. And the crowd reaction
• 20:21
  was too much. I mean, they usually tried to admonish the crowd from
• 20:25
  reacting. Here they didn't even really seem to try to do that very much,
• 20:27
  except when they were booing the hell out of Chris Christy when he tried
• 20:32
  to go after Donald Trump. But the crowd reaction was too dominant in this
• 20:37
  debate and it didn't help anybody. But I found that exchange, having almost
• 20:41
  nothing to do with the politics of this or who's gonna end up, you
• 20:45
  know, being the Republican nominee. I found that exchange to be rather interesting
• 20:51
  from a from a human standpoint, as far as Christie going after Obama Swammy
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  and vice versa, I mean, that's where the real heat of the debate
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  ended up being. There was no De Santists laying a hammer on Obama Swamy,
• 21:07
  as had been predicted by the never back Down debate prep for De Santists.
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  That did not happen. It's it possible that the leaking of that debate
• 21:17
  prep caused the Santists to lay off of that. I think that is possible,
• 21:22
  but that did not happen. Instead, it was Christie and the Fake
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  going after each other on a number of issues, including Christy and for fakes.
• 21:33
  Number one issue. Christie's number one issue is attacking Donald Trump on his
• 21:38
  legal issues, and for fakes number one issue is being a Trump surrogate who
• 21:45
  defends Trump, especially on his legal issues. And even though I'm obviously an
• 21:52
  ardent Trump critic, it is my belief that Christy really did not lay a
• 21:56
  glove on Trump. And it's large because the Fake Obama Swammy blocked him from
• 22:03
  doing so. And this is kind of what I had always envisioned as the
• 22:08
  Fake Obama Swammy's role in these debates. I had thought that it might be
• 22:14
  defending Trump against Rhonda Santas's attacks, but those attacks have never come, didn't
• 22:19
  come in the debate. Really, the only think De Santa's even mentioned Donald
• 22:25
  Trump's name. Instead, it was going after Christy. And I'm sure that
• 22:29
  Trump, you know, I wouldn't. I can't say I'm sure that he
• 22:32
  contacted him, but I'm sure that Trump wanted to contact I'm sure Trump had
• 22:36
  somebody contact for fake and congratulate him on what he did, because he was
• 22:41
  absolutely a Trump surrogate. He absolutely got the better of Christy by at least
• 22:47
  short circuiting Christie's attempted, attempted attack on Trump. It never got launched fully,
• 22:53
  in my opinion, and that's what the fake's whole role has been.
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  I have said many many times. I said three times on News Nation earlier
• 23:00
  this week. I think Dan Abrams was probably even literally irritated with me.
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  I referred to the fake Obama Swammy, although on that show I referred to
• 23:10
  him as his real name out of respect for the show, as a Trump
• 23:15
  surrogate, and that's exactly what Obama Swamy was. He was a Trump surrogate,
• 23:21
  and I'm sure Trump was, and his people were very very happy to
• 23:25
  have him there because he did a very good job. In fact, he
• 23:30
  kind of played the role of Donald Trump. I almost had the sense that
• 23:34
  what we were watching was a Broadway play where when you go to if you've
• 23:41
  ever been to a Broadway play, you don't want to hear an announcement,
• 23:45
  you know, from the public address system just before they get started, because
• 23:49
  invariably the announcement is about somebody important in the play not being there that day.
• 23:56
  So I almost had a feeling that they should have begun this debate,
• 24:02
  or just before the debate started, someone should have gotten on the public address
• 24:06
  system and said something along the lines of the role of Donald Trump tonight will
• 24:11
  be portrayed by his understudy, Vague Ramaswamy. I mean, that's basically what
• 24:18
  happened was you had an understudy, a Trump surrogate, playing the role of
• 24:23
  Donald Trump, being the person that did not care about the rules, was
• 24:29
  willing to interrupt people, was willing to say outrageous things, was willing to
• 24:33
  go farther than anybody else or further than anybody else when it comes to titilating
• 24:37
  the Republican base, saying a lot of things that sound great but will never
• 24:41
  happen, because that's what his role is. And by the way, there
• 24:48
  was more evidence before the debate that I have been right about vague Ramaswami or
• 24:53
  is now I'm never referring to him as the fake Obama swammy all along.
• 25:00
  I have told you from the beginning of this one he's a Trump surrogate.
• 25:04
  Two, he's trouble for Ronda Santis. Well, just this week, ABC
• 25:10
  News had an article about Ramaswamy as they referred to him as his real name,
• 25:15
  about Ramaswamy and his build up to his campaign and how he was pitching
• 25:22
  himself as a candidate who could have an impact on this race. And here's
• 25:27
  what ABC News reported. Ramaswamy pitched himself as a candidate who could make serious
• 25:34
  waves in the Republican primary at this meeting. This was a meeting of potential
• 25:38
  supporters. When met with some skepticism, Ramaswamy argued that his candidacy could also
• 25:48
  dissuade Florida Governor Ron De Santis from entering the race. According to a source
• 25:53
  who was on the call in the lead up to his announcement, Ramaswamy would
• 26:00
  tell several other conservative activists that he believed that if he ran, it could
• 26:07
  stop the Santists from running or impact his viability as a candidate if he did
• 26:15
  enter the race, sources said. So let me translate this for you.
• 26:21
  When he was trying to pitch his candidacy, Obama Swammy was literally telling people,
• 26:27
  literally telling people, hey, look, I can help stop the Santists.
• 26:32
  I don't know how he thought he was going to keep him from running.
• 26:33
  I mean, that's if that's true, that's that's an ego that borders
• 26:38
  on Trump's ego, because no one knew who the hell Obama Swammy was at
• 26:42
  that time. But I can certainly see the second part of this where he
• 26:48
  could take a lot of the steam out of the Santis candidacy and also protect
• 26:55
  Trump as a surrogate for Donald Trump, whether it be on the debate stage
• 27:00
  or on the campaign trail. And that second scenario has certainly turned out to
• 27:04
  be the case. Now, you know, it didn't happen directly with the
• 27:10
  Santis in this debate, but Obama Swami was clearly defending Donald Trump even though
• 27:17
  Trump was not there, and as I predicted, nobody went after Donald Trump.
• 27:22
  I mean, I do have to mention because I got a lot of
• 27:26
  pushback on this issue online, especially on Twitter, people saying, John,
• 27:30
  come on, why would Trump be protected from being attacked when he doesn't show
• 27:37
  up for the debate, And I made the argument, I said, well,
• 27:41
  for two reasons. One, because it's basically for Bowden. Now,
• 27:45
  if you want to have a chance to win the primary, unless you're Asa
• 27:48
  Hutchinson who has no chance, or Chris Christy who has basically no chance either,
• 27:53
  if you want to have a chance, you can't go directly at Donald
• 27:56
  Trump, especially on the nightments. It's it's against the Republican religion. Now,
• 28:04
  you can't go against the cult on it's a it's a third rail issue,
• 28:08
  and that's that's number one. But number two that it would be perceived
• 28:11
  as bad form or inappropriate, as bizarre as that is to go after Donald
• 28:18
  Trump, but he's not there to defend himself, even though his understudy,
• 28:22
  the Trump surrogate but fake Obama Swamy was there to defend him. So,
• 28:26
  as I said on NewsNation, he gets the best of both worlds. He
• 28:29
  gets to avoid the questioning, he gets a defender there on stage, and
• 28:33
  he gets not to be attacked because for some bizarre reason, nobody that matters
• 28:37
  feels like it's in their self interest to attack Donald Trump in this particular situation.
• 28:44
  And I think that's pretty much the way it turned out. That's pretty
• 28:47
  much the way it turned out. And as far as the fake Obama swammy,
• 28:51
  I do want to mention one other thing that occurred before the debate,
• 28:56
  and this showed me that at least there's a pulse. There's a pulse.
• 29:00
  It's a fake pulse, but there's a pulse when it comes to the issue
• 29:04
  of journalism in some very isolated areas, and in this particular case, fake
• 29:12
  Obama Swami is getting some legitimate vetting. And it's difficult to vet somebody who
• 29:17
  has no background really whatsoever in politics and is white clean what little background there
• 29:23
  is, specifically when it comes to his connection to the George Soros Foundation and
• 29:29
  his record on COVID. But the fake has also made some comments about nine
• 29:34
  to eleven that we're consistent with at least dabbling in trutherism or conspiracy or an
• 29:44
  inside job. And he was interviewed about this on CNN by Caitlin Collins,
• 29:48
  and of course he claimed that he'd been taken out of context and misquoted,
• 29:52
  and he never said those things. Then the reporter came forward and said,
• 29:56
  that's not true. Here's the proof. And I have to say Megan Kelly,
• 30:00
  who have been very disappointed in because she's basically all in for Donald Trump
• 30:04
  at this point, and I have a lot of respect for her intellect and
• 30:08
  occasionally her character, but that's been very, very disappointing. But she came
• 30:15
  much like she did. I'll give her some credit too. She came to
• 30:18
  Sandus's defense on this bullcrap listless vessels controversy that we discussed in episode eighty two,
• 30:25
  But she came to Caitlin Collins defense on this and tweeted out basically a
• 30:30
  condemnation of a fake Obama swammy on this issue of nine to nine to eleven
• 30:37
  trutherism. So I'll give Megan County some credit for that. I mean,
• 30:41
  I criticized media members all the time here on the death of journalism. Occasionally,
• 30:45
  when I see good things, I want to be able to give credit
• 30:48
  where credit is due, and some credit is in fact do on that.
• 30:52
  So I think that for fake Obama swammy is getting some vetting, and I
• 30:57
  think that his ceiling based upon the Republican debate has been lowered. In other
• 31:04
  words, I think a lot of Republicans, after watching that debate, I've
• 31:10
  decided they will never vote for fake Obama Swammy. I think that they got
• 31:15
  the message that there's something not right about this guy. But that doesn't mean
• 31:19
  it was a bad night for for Fake Obama Swammy. I think his level
• 31:26
  of support is gonna stay pretty much where it was, and it may if
• 31:30
  he's still riding momentum from the Tucker Carlson interview and Elon Musk positively retweeting that,
• 31:40
  basically giving him a half hearted endorsement, and the extra credibility that he's
• 31:45
  now getting and visibility because of the debate. I would guess then in a
• 31:51
  couple of weeks, the fake Obama Swammy's level of support it's gonna probably be
• 31:57
  a little bit higher than it is today. Now. I don't know.
• 32:00
  I had predicted that if it went badly for de Santis and well for Fake,
• 32:07
  that for Fake would end up tying to Santis a week or ten days
• 32:12
  after this debate. That was my prediction beforehand. It did not go badly
• 32:16
  for Rhonda Santis. It didn't go spectacularly. Well, every answer was classic
• 32:21
  to Santis, he's a little bit too energized. At first, I thought
• 32:25
  he missed an opportunity to be emphatic and the first question, which I want
• 32:30
  to get to momentarily, because that was really a bizarre subject matter, or
• 32:34
  at least a weird way to get into the subject matter that Fox News Channel
• 32:37
  used to start the debate. But it was always solid, it was always
• 32:42
  articulate, it was always on point. Frankly, I think he was the
• 32:46
  only guy that ever answered the questions in less time than he had allotted to
• 32:52
  him. He almost went too fast, if I would almost tell him to
• 32:57
  slow down. He as it went on, he got a little bit more
• 33:01
  empathetic towards voters when I would have liked to have seen that early on.
• 33:07
  But by and large, it was basically exactly as I expected. Very professional,
• 33:13
  very functional, functional, professional, functional, mechanical, on point solid.
• 33:21
  You can't really argue on the merits or on the substance of it.
• 33:25
  Unspectacular, He wasn't funny. There was nothing really super memorable that he said.
• 33:32
  You know, I would have lost my mind if he had dropped for
• 33:36
  fake Obama Swamy on on the guy sitting to his left. I knew that
• 33:42
  was never gonna happen. I think it would have been a great move.
• 33:45
  I think he would have won the night. I think he would have risen
• 33:47
  in the polls. But I think that the Santa support is going to remain
• 33:52
  exactly as it was. I don't know whether it a little inch up a
• 33:57
  little bit or not. I don't know where it would come from. I
• 34:00
  mean, I guess there's some undecided voters out there. But one of the
• 34:05
  things that I was very concerned about with regard to this debate is inherently inherently,
• 34:09
  when you have Ron de Sandis in the Seven Dwarfs, which is basically
• 34:14
  what this was, you know they're going to find some people watching who like
• 34:17
  each of the Seven Dwarfs. Even if you know they didn't do spectacularly well,
• 34:22
  there might be something about them that you like. So if each of
• 34:27
  them even picks up half a percentage point in the National Republican polls, then
• 34:31
  you know that's got to come from somewhere. And so my guess is,
• 34:36
  here's my guests politically that you know a week from ten days, once this
• 34:40
  all shakes out, you're still going to see Ron de Sandus in second place.
• 34:45
  It's possible that for Fake Obama Swami will have caught up slightly to him.
• 34:52
  Uh, you know, it'll probably be a you know, at that
• 34:54
  point, it will be pretty clear that for Fake is in third place.
• 34:59
  Chris Christie did not, in my opinion, do nearly as well as I
• 35:02
  thought he might, and I think that was mainly because the subject matter was
• 35:07
  not Donald Trump. I mean, Chris Christie claims that's the whole reason why
• 35:10
  he's in the race, and the reality is, I don't think that's why
• 35:15
  he's in the race. As I said on News Nation, I think he's
• 35:16
  mostly in the race to make sure he gets his contract to ABC News as
• 35:22
  a commentator renewed when this is all said and done. I mean, I
• 35:24
  think there's an ego thing involved. I think there's a vendetta thing involved involving
• 35:29
  Donald Trump, and I would like to believe he thinks he's doing the right
• 35:34
  thing. But he's also gone after Ron to santists a few times. He
• 35:37
  did so again a couple of days ago. So this idea that he's exclusively
• 35:40
  in here to try to, you know, take out Donald Trump is just
• 35:45
  a farce. It's not real, but I don't. I don't see Christy
• 35:49
  making a huge move there, and that may, you know, be It's
• 35:54
  possible in theory, that might be where the Santists maybe picks up some brown
• 36:00
  maybe some of the anti Trump people, the never Trump people who had been
• 36:04
  promising. You know, I've been thinking that Christy was a promising option.
• 36:08
  No longer all that name with him, and they might decide, oh,
• 36:12
  okay, you know what, de Sandis is the solid guy, and I'll
• 36:15
  go with him. I don't know, but my guess is we're still going
• 36:19
  to see de Sandis and second for Fake Obama Swamy in third, but with
• 36:24
  a much lower ceiling. I think that Fake has probably increased his CUE rating
• 36:32
  as well as his favorability among Trump's supporters, which is only relevant if Trump
• 36:38
  is no longer running, right, I mean, it's not that unless he's
• 36:43
  running for vice president. Now. He has said he's not interested in running
• 36:45
  for vice president. People have said that many times before and ended up being
• 36:50
  exactly that, so I'm not really putting too much stock in that. But
• 36:53
  he has for the record said that he would not be Donald Trump's vice presidential
• 36:59
  nominee. But increasing your favorability among Donald Trump supporters is really not that helpful
• 37:06
  when it comes to your support level in the Republican primary right now, because
• 37:09
  those people are obviously going to pick Donald Trump is their first choice. Now,
• 37:13
  if we somehow get to a position, which this debate seemed to be
• 37:17
  foreshadowing or pretending, was the case that Donald Trump is no longer running,
• 37:23
  whether because he died, or he's in prison, or somehow has been forced
• 37:27
  to withdraw, none of those things seem at all likely to me. Then
• 37:31
  all of a sudden that becomes significant because you know, let's pretend, let's
• 37:37
  pretend, I mean, the guy is as this podcast is coming out,
• 37:40
  you know, he is getting his mug shot taken. If Trump is no
• 37:45
  longer in the race. Again, I do not, in any way,
• 37:49
  shape or form for see this, then you know, for fake Obama Swami
• 37:52
  may not be in a bad spot because I think if you asked at this
• 37:59
  point, especially after this debate, Trump supporters who their second choice would be,
• 38:04
  my guess is it would be a fake Obama swammy. And I think
• 38:07
  that that's probably part of Obama Swammy's strategy and all this. So the bottom
• 38:15
  line though here is that I don't think this debate changed very much. It
• 38:21
  seemed to be like an exercise in futility and exercise and pretend Rohn to Sandus
• 38:28
  played it rather safe. My belief in Rohnd De Santas as a potentially great
• 38:34
  president has not changed at all. However, my belief that there's any realistic
• 38:39
  way for him to win the nomination and the general election, which has always
• 38:44
  been getting, you know, more and more strained as the months went on,
• 38:49
  is still very very low. I was at least contemplating the idea that
• 38:53
  this went very badly for De Santis, that you know, I could end
• 38:59
  up just giving up on the whole race, and that I would effectively call
• 39:01
  it. I'm not ready to do that yet. You know, if hopefully
• 39:07
  this stopped the bleeding, I don't know if it will. I'm hopeful that
• 39:10
  it will. But if it did, then I think, you know,
• 39:15
  de Sanders lives to go another day. And the next next debate will be
• 39:20
  in September, right near where I live at the Reagan Library. And to
• 39:23
  me, it's very obvious that Trump is not going to do that debate.
• 39:28
  He's not going to do that debate. He's already said negative things about the
• 39:32
  guy who is at the head of the board of the Reagan Library, which
• 39:37
  is completely irrelevant to how a debate would be handled. I mean, it's
• 39:40
  just fantasy that somehow that would have anything to do with the questions that Trump
• 39:45
  might get asked there. But he's already set the productate and the precedent and
• 39:52
  the foundation for this whole idea that he doesn't have to do the debates,
• 39:55
  just as I predicted, and he has cited the pull numbers just as I
• 40:00
  predicted. Now he's citing the poll numbers inaccurately, and that's where I want
• 40:07
  to begin with this competing event that he did with Tucker Carlson. You know,
• 40:14
  Tucker Carlson has been such a disappointment. I almost feel a little bit
• 40:20
  embarrassed because at one point I thought there was a chance that Tucker could be
• 40:27
  the hero here, and instead he's turned out, as I've referred to him
• 40:30
  many times before, as the MVP of the Trump campaign, and I have
• 40:36
  said that in many different venues and numerous times in this podcast, and I
• 40:40
  think it's probably one of my better predictions of many good ones in this cycle,
• 40:45
  where I predicted very very early on I mean, you know, it's
• 40:50
  from a coping mechanism standpoint, it's kind of funny. I actually have video
• 40:53
  of me on national television on News Nation, literally going through the emotional rsists
• 41:00
  of realizing that Donald Trump was going to be the nominee because of Tucker Carlson,
• 41:05
  and I have it for perpetuity, or at least as long as I
• 41:07
  have my phone, because it happened on television and I basically had a I
• 41:15
  don't know if you call it a temper tantrum, but I had a very
• 41:17
  emotional outburst, something like the likes of which you probably have not seen on
• 41:22
  cable news television in quite a while, you know, because I realized very
• 41:29
  very early on after that first indictment that what Tucker Carlson was doing was playing
• 41:35
  with fire, and that Tucker Carlson, whether he realized it or not,
• 41:37
  was paving the way for Trump to be the nominee by creating a narrative that
• 41:45
  would justify Republican not just justify, demand that Republicans rally around Trump otherwise we've
• 41:52
  lost our country, We've lost the Republic. And Glenn Beck helped him out
• 41:58
  on that and turn appeared on his show with the red Maga hat, which
• 42:00
  was incredibly disappointing given my relationship with Glenn, which is which has been far
• 42:06
  more extensive than my relationship with Tucker Carlson. I don't think I've ever even
• 42:09
  met Tucker Carlson. I worked briefly for him many years ago. We've texted
• 42:15
  many times over the years, and you may recall, and I went back
• 42:17
  and looked at this because of this this event that was contrived to try to
• 42:22
  sabotage this debate and to try to create vengeance on Fox News Channel. We're
• 42:29
  both Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump obviously have a clear vendetta against Fox News Channel.
• 42:36
  I went back and I looked at the key text message exchange, and
• 42:39
  I'm pretty sure I've read this previously on the podcast. I think I did
• 42:43
  it back in April. But this is from April the second, just a
• 42:46
  little over four months ago. And you know, looking back on us now,
• 42:51
  it's it's only just a little over four months ago, but it seems
• 42:53
  like it was four years ago, because obviously since then, Tucker has been
• 42:58
  fired and he's gotten completely and totally on the Trump train. And this is
• 43:01
  a guy who should be pointed out in the Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit, was
• 43:07
  quoted as saying that he hates Trump passionately and couldn't wait to stop talking about
• 43:13
  him, and said all sorts of disparaging things about Donald Trump. And I
• 43:16
  know that that was the real Tucker Carlson. At least it was the real
• 43:20
  Tucker Carlson until whatever happened over the last several months. And my intention in
• 43:27
  texting Tucker at the time was the one at least let him know what he
• 43:30
  was doing. Whether it was his intent or not, I at least wanted
• 43:36
  him to realize and have somebody because I knew, I know the way these
• 43:38
  people operate. I know a lot of famous people. Nobody within their bubble
• 43:43
  is ever gonna say anything negative to them, because no one wants to be
• 43:46
  kicked out of the bubble. I didn't care about being in the bubble.
• 43:49
  I don't even think I was in the bubble. I just happened to have
• 43:52
  his cell phone number, and we've texted a lot over the years, and
• 43:55
  so that was my first intention. My second intention, which I even I
• 44:00
  was not delusional enough to think that this would be successful. I thought,
• 44:05
  is it possible, Maybe I can guilt Tucker into, you know, stopping
• 44:10
  this path that he's on, because it's maybe if he doesn't realize he's on
• 44:15
  this path and someone points it out, he'll reverse himself. Well, that
• 44:20
  was always delusional. And now, like I say, I'm kind of embarrassed
• 44:22
  that I even thought this was possible. But I went back to look at
• 44:25
  those text messages and just for the record a second time, he's Here was
• 44:30
  the text exchange between me and Tucker Carlson on April of twelve. Believe this
• 44:36
  is just after the first Trump indictment and Tucker has Trump on his show and
• 44:43
  kisses his ass, and the whole narrative with Glenn Beck I referenced, and
• 44:46
  and here's what I wrote to Tucker. Tucker, no one has more respect
• 44:50
  for your talent and intellect than me, but you should know that no one
• 44:53
  has done more to resuscitate Trump's campaign than you, and that this has greatly
• 45:00
  helped ensure his nomination, Biden's reelection, or even far worse, if you
• 45:06
  are right about Newsom, which I do not think you are, because he
• 45:08
  was saying that Newsom was gonna Pete the Democratic nominee, and the official end
• 45:14
  of the Republic, but at least you will now have a Democrat slash socialist
• 45:20
  president to rail against for the remainder of your very lucrative career. I totally
• 45:24
  understand the path you have chosen, but I'm disappointed because, unlike the rest
• 45:30
  of the hacks and grifters in the formerly conservative media, I actually had expectations
• 45:35
  that you might be the person in a position of power who would have the
• 45:40
  courage and the judgment to do the right thing for the country. That was
• 45:46
  the text his response. You can almost hear him right the Tucker Carlson laugh
• 45:53
  with an exclamation point. Pretty funny. Now, there's a lot of ways
• 45:59
  you can interpret that, and I think you need to interpret it in the
• 46:01
  full context of the rest of the exchange as well as what's happened since I
• 46:07
  responded to ha pretty funny by saying, I wish it was funny, Tucker,
• 46:13
  but the final end of the country which Trump's nomination brings is hardly funny.
• 46:16
  The fact that you appear to think that it is parentheses. I know
• 46:22
  you are laughing that you are a key part in this happening, but you
• 46:30
  absolutely are tells me everything I need to know. Very sad sleep well and
• 46:36
  enjoy the grift while our kids greatly suffer. And then I put the vomit
• 46:43
  emoji at the end of the text. His response to that was, what's
• 46:47
  funny is that you think I'm in control of any of this. I'm a
• 46:52
  talk show host, which I realized that that was just pure ofiscation. I
• 46:59
  mean that it's the last bashtion of a scoundrel who does not want to take
• 47:01
  accountability for his actions. I mean, at this time, he's the number
• 47:06
  one talent on the number one cable news network that is, you know,
• 47:12
  obviously the dominant force and conservative media. There's a reason why he's getting paid
• 47:16
  a lot of money because he has a lot of influence, and we have
• 47:20
  seen since his firing just how much influence he's had. In fact, you
• 47:23
  could argue he maybe has more influence because of all the street credit got from
• 47:28
  being fired by Fox News Channel. I believe because he called effectively one of
• 47:34
  his bosses the C word, which is absolutely a fireable offense, especially when
• 47:37
  he told the lawyers that he wanted the whole world to know that he has
• 47:40
  said it, and he's lying about this idea that somehow his firing was a
• 47:47
  part of the actual settlement with dominion voting systems itself. That's nonsensical and there's
• 47:52
  no evidence for it, and everyone's denied that. But that's the narrative that
• 47:55
  he's chosen for himself. But for him to play that card was really disappointing
• 48:00
  to me, but it was also very telling. And I responded saying,
• 48:05
  I already referenced that was what you thought was funny. You are not in
• 48:09
  control, but you have a huge influence. Blah blah blah. I never
• 48:13
  got a response to that, and I don't think we've ever had a full
• 48:15
  exchange of tech since then, because then I went public with not only that
• 48:21
  exchange, but also my very very strong opinion that Tucker Carlson was going to
• 48:25
  be the MVP of the Trump campaign. And that has absolutely been the case,
• 48:30
  especially since his firing. And we saw it the night of the Republican
• 48:35
  debate, because he didn't just do an interview with Donald Trump. He posted
• 48:40
  it on Twitter free, no commercials, no nothing, five minutes before the
• 48:47
  debate was scheduled to start. I mean, it was basically a complete fuck
• 48:51
  you to his former employer, Fox News Channel. Luck. I mean,
• 48:54
  I've hated former employers as much as anybody. I get it. I can
• 49:00
  totally understand why that would be difficult to resist if you wanted to do that.
• 49:06
  But you know, this is a really important issue. This is bigger
• 49:09
  than just getting revenge on your former employer, or if you're Donald Trump,
• 49:15
  getting revenge on a media outlet that you don't think has kissed your ass nearly
• 49:20
  enough over the last year or so. This is about the fate of the
• 49:23
  country. And I'm pretty sure that I would be able to see the farest
• 49:30
  through the trees here if I was ever in Tucker's position, because this is
• 49:35
  really significantly important, and Tucker really went out of his way to help Donald
• 49:40
  trumpet get out of this issue of the fact that he dodged the first debate.
• 49:45
  I mean, that should be the topic, that should be what everyone's
• 49:47
  talking about. Donald Trump alleged alpha male dodge the first debate. He's a
• 49:52
  coward, he's afraid of real questioning, and instead, because Tucker has so
• 49:59
  much treet cred within the Republican right wing conservative world, he almost gets credit
• 50:06
  for now. While facing a lot more questions from Tucker than anybody did on
• 50:10
  that ridiculous two hour debate, with eight people on the stage, and so
• 50:16
  you know, they do this Twitter interview, and I know the Twitter I
• 50:19
  knew, I mean, I knew this was going to be a softball interview
• 50:22
  simply because I know Tucker's incentive structure, I know Trump's incentive structure, I
• 50:29
  know the nature of the business. But I really knew when Trump sent out
• 50:34
  a fundraising email a couple hours before the interview was going to be posted on
• 50:39
  Twitter, because they had taped it previously, and he was touting the interview
• 50:44
  and calling Tucker an important ally in his make America grade again. Cause well,
• 50:52
  obviously, since the interview had already been done, nothing remotely negative about
• 50:57
  Trump had been said. There were no tough questions, and all of the
• 51:01
  concerns that Tucker has had about Trump, many of them especially related to COVID
• 51:07
  and vaccines and what have you. I'm sure we're at the very best muted
• 51:12
  tremendously, if not completely, expunged from the interview. Questioning Now, I
• 51:17
  did not watch the entire thing. I watched the first portion of it,
• 51:22
  and I found it to be incredibly telling and hilarious because there wasn't a situation
• 51:29
  that was hilarious, but before we get to the interview itself, I want
• 51:31
  to play a clip of Tucker promoting the interview because the way was promoted,
• 51:37
  at least to me, was kind of indicative of this whole scam that they
• 51:43
  were perpetrating on conservative or Republican voters. So here is Tucker promoting the interview
• 51:52
  with Donald Trump that was going to be posted on Twitter. A couple of
• 51:54
  hours later, on Sunday, Donald Trump announced that he will not participate pate
• 52:00
  in tonight's Republican candidates debate hosted by Fox News in Milwaukee. Whatever you think
• 52:05
  of Trump, he is, as of tonight, the indisputable, far and
• 52:08
  away front runner in the Republican race. We think voters have an interest in
• 52:13
  hearing what he thinks. So when Trump approached us about having a conversation for
• 52:16
  a far larger audience than he'd receive on cable news, we happily accepted that
• 52:22
  interview will air tonight in this space at eight fifty five. We hope you'll
• 52:25
  watch. Now. What I found so striking about that is the implication is
• 52:31
  that somehow Trump was being prevented from speaking, that Tucker is stepping in to
• 52:40
  provide Trump with a form or a platform, that he was being denied.
• 52:47
  That was the implication I got, when, of course, that's not at
• 52:52
  all the truth. It's the opposite of the truth. He was he was
• 52:55
  dodging a platform, and instead what Tucker ended up doing was providing him a
• 53:01
  fake platform where he could seemingly answer questions. But they weren't real questions,
• 53:07
  they weren't difficult questions, there were no real rebuttals, there were no opportunity
• 53:12
  for someone with a theoretical self interest to attack him, to go after him,
• 53:17
  no need for him to be able to be forced to respond to negative
• 53:22
  attacks. Not who the hell knows whether that would have even happened if he
• 53:25
  had actually shown up, but at least in theory it could have. And
• 53:30
  so this is all a charade, like a pretend, like we decided that,
• 53:34
  you know this, he's an important person, so we wanted to give
• 53:37
  him a platform. And then of course there's the dig about how many people
• 53:42
  would be watching, and more people would be watching on Twitter than would be
• 53:45
  watching on cable news. And I am have already implied, I am positive
• 53:52
  that there are going to be many comparisons by the Trump people. First,
• 53:55
  in comparison the comparis comparing the first debate from twenty sixteen on Fox News Channel
• 54:02
  ratings wives to this one, and it's going to be night and day.
• 54:06
  I mean, this debate is going to get much smaller television ratings than the
• 54:10
  first debate in twenty sixteen. I'm quite sure of that, and I'm quite
• 54:14
  sure that Trump will be screaming those numbers from the mountaintop. The other thing
• 54:19
  they're gonna do is they're gonna try to compare the number of people who watched
• 54:22
  the Trump quote unquote interview LoveFest with Tucker Carlson to how many people watched the
• 54:30
  Republican debate on Fox News Channel. And the reality here is there's no way
• 54:34
  to really know, at least as far as I can tell, how many
• 54:37
  people really watched the Trump interview. The number you're gonna hear a lot of
• 54:45
  is that the tweet that Tucker Carlson tweet or post on X now as it
• 54:51
  used to be called Twitter, The post on X is going to be seen
• 54:55
  it looks like by over one hundred million people before it's all said and done,
• 55:01
  or I shouldn't even say people are over one hundred million times, But
• 55:07
  what does that mean? Well, I'm not denying that's a huge number.
• 55:10
  Assuming it's remotely real, that's a huge, huge number. But that is
• 55:15
  basically like impressions like you were exposed to that post. That doesn't mean you
• 55:22
  watched any of it. It certainly doesn't mean you watched all of it.
• 55:27
  And when you look at the number of retweets or reposts, it's a much
• 55:31
  much, much smaller number than one hundred million. It's going to be in
• 55:37
  the hundreds of thousands if you look at reposts or likes, And to me,
• 55:43
  that would be a better indication of how many people really were truly exposed
• 55:49
  to the interview. So look, I'm not trying to pretend I know which
• 55:54
  got more eyeballs. I just know that they're gonna lie about the metro on
• 56:00
  the Trump Tucker interview in a way that to try to make it look like
• 56:05
  they dwarfed the Republican debate on Fox News Channel. That there's not gonna be
• 56:09
  any way to know that for sure, And my guess is that's not really
• 56:15
  true. Now, is it possible that more people did watch the Trump Tucker
• 56:19
  interview? Yeah, I have no problem believing that. But you're going to
• 56:22
  hear numbers that are completely out of the realm of reality, because that's what
• 56:28
  Trump does. In fact, he begins the Tucker interview by lying about how
• 56:32
  much he's winning by how much he's winning in the polls, which is the
• 56:37
  whole justification for not going to the debate. To begin with his justification as
• 56:42
  well, I'm winning by sixty points or fifty points or seventy points. Sometimes
• 56:47
  no, no, no, no, You're not winning by that much.
• 56:51
  There are some polls, like a CBS poll has you at sixty two percent
• 56:57
  of Republican support nationally. Other words, sixty two percent of Republicans nationally support
• 57:02
  Donald Trump, and a recent CBS poll that's pretty much the high water mark
• 57:07
  in a legitimate poll for Donald Trump. That doesn't mean you're winning by sixty
• 57:13
  Now, you're winning by sixty over Asa Hutchinson, but you're not winning by
• 57:17
  sixty over Rohn de Santis. You're Unfortunately, that number is getting closer to
• 57:22
  that. It's it's over forty in some polls it's under forty, and others
• 57:27
  it's way below forty and some of the key early states. But I would
• 57:31
  say right now Trump's lead is probably nationally about forty points over Rohn De Santis
• 57:38
  could be thirty five. You know, it depends on how much you're trusting
• 57:44
  in the polls. But it's certainly nowhere near what Trump claims at the beginning
• 57:47
  of the Tucker Carlson interview. But that's what Trump does. And then,
• 57:51
  of course Trump immediately rips on Fox, which you know clearly part of a
• 57:57
  vendetta. Rips on Ron De Santis, calls him to sanctimonious, claims that
• 58:00
  Fox News Channel was all in for the sanctimonious but now they've given up on
• 58:05
  him. He rips on Asa Hutchinson for some reason. I mean, he
• 58:09
  ripped on other candidates in this interview, and it's the first few minutes of
• 58:14
  this interview with Tucker Carlson than anyone including Chris Christie or maybe you know,
• 58:20
  combining Chris Christie and Asa Hudginson, maybe they ripped on Trump as much as
• 58:24
  as he ripped on them. By the way, Trump goes after Christy in
• 58:30
  the interview as well, and so this is consistent with Trump getting to have
• 58:35
  his cake and eat it too. He goes after the Santas, he goes
• 58:37
  after Christi, he goes after Hutchinson. Of course, he doesn't go after
• 58:40
  Obama swamming gee, I wonder why, and he basically ignores everybody else.
• 58:47
  But you know, there were no from what I saw, tough questions,
• 58:52
  no indication there were gonna be any tough questions. I've seen no indication online
• 58:57
  that there were any serious tough questions. And in fact, the one portion
• 59:02
  of this interview that I want to play for you is flat out hilarious because
• 59:07
  it's a subject that I have discussed many times on this podcast before, and
• 59:12
  I think this vindicates me in a huge way in so many different directions back
• 59:16
  back. Probably could have it wasn't for the debate. This is how I
• 59:20
  would have led today's podcast, because this is an absolutely bonkers exchange and exposes
• 59:28
  everything about the completely broken nature of our national dialogue of cable news, of
• 59:35
  what a fraud Tucker Carlson has become. But it dealt with the issue of
• 59:39
  Jeffrey Epstein's death. Now, you know, one of the many aspects of
• 59:45
  the Jeffrey Epstein story that gets completely blown on the right wing is how close
• 59:50
  Trump and Epstein were. I mean, there are videos of Epstein and Trump
• 59:53
  at a nightclub acting like their fraternity brothers, and if the same video exist
• 1:00:00
  did of any other figure not Trump, that would be epso facto evidence of
• 1:00:06
  criminal child abuse among Trump fans. But that gets completely forgotten. But I
• 1:00:12
  don't what he want to deal with that issue, because the main issue here
• 1:00:15
  is the death. And as you probably know if you're a listener to this
• 1:00:17
  podcast, I am been adamant that Jeffrey Epstein did in fact kill himself.
• 1:00:23
  And the reason why we know he killed himself is because if he hadn't killed
• 1:00:30
  himself, this would be the easiest crime. If someone had murdered him in
• 1:00:34
  a federal prison, this would be the easiest crime to solve, maybe in
• 1:00:38
  history, because we would know exactly who was in the prison. It would
• 1:00:43
  be a handful of people. We'd be able to question them immediately. We'd
• 1:00:46
  be able to make sure that didn't have anything funny happened with their bank accounts,
• 1:00:52
  or they didn't quit their jobs and moved to a foreign country, because
• 1:00:57
  that's what would have to happen, right to make sense. They to be
• 1:01:00
  paid a hell of a lot of money to commit murder in a federal prison,
• 1:01:05
  and at the very least, at the very least if this happened,
• 1:01:09
  there would be a suspect, there would be a suspect, it would be
• 1:01:14
  at least one suspect. And instead, you never hear the name of any
• 1:01:17
  suspect involving the murder of Jeffrey Hempstein because it didn't happen that way. And
• 1:01:22
  you know who clearly doesn't believe that Jeffrey Epstein was murdered in a federal prison,
• 1:01:30
  Donald fucking Trump. Donald fucking Trump clearly does not believe it. However,
• 1:01:37
  he's smart and savvy enough to play it with Tucker in a way that
• 1:01:45
  is frankly a little bit embarrassing towards Tucker. But he doesn't completely humiliate Tucker.
• 1:01:50
  He allows Tucker to hold on to his fairy tale Santa Claus Easter Bunny,
• 1:01:57
  you know, leprechn pot of gold fairy tale, without disabusing of a
• 1:02:06
  disabusing him of it completely. He doesn't do that. Trump doesn't do that.
• 1:02:10
  But Tucker here is hilarious because Tucker, I think, is expecting to
• 1:02:16
  get some substantiation from Trump, to get some backing from Trump on his very
• 1:02:22
  declarative statement, frankly defamatory statement. I mean, if I'm Bill Barr,
• 1:02:29
  the former attorney General of the United States, who you know, was in
• 1:02:32
  charge of the federal prison. That's what the attorney general. Part of the
• 1:02:36
  attorney general's job. I mean. So if this happened, if Epstein really
• 1:02:39
  was murdered, this is Bill Barr's job to get to the bottom of it.
• 1:02:44
  It's happened under his watch. And by the way, of course,
• 1:02:46
  above, Bill Barr is Donald Trump, and Tucker accuses Bill Barr unequivocally of
• 1:02:55
  lying and engaging in a cover up of Jeffrey Epstein's murder, which is an
• 1:03:02
  extraordinary thing. Again, I hope Barr goes after Carlson at least in some
• 1:03:07
  way for defamation here, but Trump doesn't give him what he wants. In
• 1:03:15
  fact, in this exchange, it's a little bit long because it starts on
• 1:03:19
  the Epstein subject then, and frankly, I think this is very telling.
• 1:03:22
  Trump is trying desperately to change the subject. Listen carefully. He's attacking Bar
• 1:03:30
  in every way possible, except when it comes to the direct issue of the
• 1:03:37
  Epstein suicide slash murder. And at one point Trump even says Epstein probably committed
• 1:03:45
  suicide. That's a direct quote from Donald Trump. And then hilariously, Tucker
• 1:03:53
  Carlson, I can't even make this up, tries to claim, well,
• 1:03:57
  I'm not a conspiracy person at all, which is just fucking hilarious, because,
• 1:04:01
  as I've documented on this podcast for the last several months, that's all
• 1:04:05
  Tucker Carlson has become. He's mister conspiracy and in this one he's flat out
• 1:04:11
  fucking wrong. And even Trump knows it. And while I'll give Trump's some
• 1:04:15
  credit here, he at least kind of says it, even if he gives
• 1:04:20
  just enough room towards the end, because I think Trump's a smart guy in
• 1:04:25
  this kind of situation. He knows he doesn't want any any blowback from his
• 1:04:29
  people. By the way, I don't even think he fully understands how many
• 1:04:32
  of his people are all in on Epstein was murdered, because it takes a
• 1:04:39
  while for Trump to kind of register where Tucker's coming from on this, and
• 1:04:45
  at the end Trump gives him just enough breathing room is to not humiliate him.
• 1:04:49
  But in the real world, in the real world, when you listen
• 1:04:53
  to this clip, here is Tucker Carlson humiliating himself. Donald Trump effectively saying,
• 1:05:00
  you're crazy, Tucker, You're wrong and then letting him slither out of
• 1:05:06
  this so that he doesn't get totally humiliated. And I'm frankly, I'm a
• 1:05:10
  little bit surprised this even was left in the interview. It makes Tucker look
• 1:05:15
  that bad, at least in the rational world. But you know, my
• 1:05:17
  guess is the rational world doesn't have a lot of impact on how these things
• 1:05:21
  work anymore. So here is is a couple minute long clip of this portion
• 1:05:27
  of the interview between Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump. But it was just interesting.
• 1:05:30
  I read Bar's account of his time. He wrote a book about it,
• 1:05:35
  his autobiography, and in it he lies about Jeffrey Epstein's death, clearly
• 1:05:41
  lies. Do you think Epstein killed himself? Sincerely, I don't know.
• 1:05:46
  I will say that, you know, he's a fixture in Palm Beach.
• 1:05:49
  Yeah, I don't know what Barr said about it either. I have no
• 1:05:54
  idea what he said. What did he say he killed himself? Probably he
• 1:05:56
  said he killed himself, and that they were going to this investigation they never
• 1:05:59
  did. The investigate should have never been public, and they hit it,
• 1:06:00
  and like, why are they doing that? He literally barn knew, But
• 1:06:04
  why would Bill Barr be covering up the death of Jeffrey Epstein. Bill bar
• 1:06:09
  didn't do an investigation on the election fraud either. Okay, he said he
• 1:06:12
  did, and he pretended he did, but he didn't. Mcswaine, the
• 1:06:15
  US attorney in Pennsylvania Philadelphia, said Bar just wouldn't let him do it.
• 1:06:21
  Was crazy. Barr became so petrified, so frightened of being impeached. We're
• 1:06:28
  going to impeach him. I don't know if you remember it. Yeah,
• 1:06:29
  it's not a big moment in history, but they said we're going to impeach.
• 1:06:32
  You know, they play a much rougher game, the left, the
• 1:06:35
  lunatics, and they were going to impeach Bill Barr, and he was petrified.
• 1:06:41
  Now, how do you not get impeached? Don't do any of this
• 1:06:44
  stuff. But he didn't do the job there. I don't know what he
• 1:06:46
  did with Epstein, but possibly he do you think it's possible that Epstein was
• 1:06:50
  killed? Oh, it's possible. I mean, I don't really believe.
• 1:06:54
  I think he probably committed suicide. He had a life with you know,
• 1:06:59
  beautiful homes and beautiful everything, and he all of a sudden he's incarcerated and
• 1:07:04
  not doing very well. I would say that he did. But there are
• 1:07:10
  those people. There are many people. I think you're one of them,
• 1:07:12
  right, But a lot of people think that he he was killed. He
• 1:07:15
  knew a lot on a lot of people he was killed. I think I
• 1:07:18
  think the more the closer you look, I'm not a conspiracy person at all.
• 1:07:21
  I believe everything I hear, but yeah, the closer you look into
• 1:07:26
  it, I mean, the Attorney General the United States, your attorney genern't
• 1:07:29
  clearly lied about the Epstein. Yeah he was. He was. Certainly it
• 1:07:34
  wasn't well done. They had no cameras, they had no anything. Everybody
• 1:07:39
  was sleeping, and you know they're the case could be made. Look,
• 1:07:43
  I'm not going to get involved in it, but I can tell you a
• 1:07:45
  case could be made either way. But it certainly wasn't the most well run
• 1:07:50
  place. I mean, in my opinion, that clip belongs in a museum.
• 1:07:57
  It really does. It tells you everything you need to know about our
• 1:08:00
  media, everything you need to know about our politics. It tells you a
• 1:08:05
  lot about Donald Trump, it tells you an awful lot about who Tucker Carlson
• 1:08:10
  is. And you know what it really should tell you if you understand the
• 1:08:13
  real world, and you read between the lines. Jeffrey Epstein wasn't murdered.
• 1:08:17
  He killed himself in prison. That's what happened. And by the way,
• 1:08:21
  I should be pointing this out, Tucker, this is so classic. This
• 1:08:27
  is partly why this belongs in a museum. In accusing Bill Barr of a
• 1:08:30
  cover up of Jeffrey Epstein's murder, he's effectively condemning Donald Trump for being part
• 1:08:39
  of a cover up of Epstein's murder. At the very least, Tucker knowingly
• 1:08:44
  or unknowingly or stupidly is effectively saying, Trump, You're so dumb you let
• 1:08:49
  your attorney general engage in a cover up of Jeffrey Epstein's murder. So either
• 1:08:55
  Trump is involved in the cover upper, he's a complete moron. But we
• 1:09:00
  live in a world where we can pretend that, no, that's not part
• 1:09:04
  of the equation. We don't need to connect all the dots. We can
• 1:09:06
  just stop it at Bill Barr. And we don't like Bill Barr anymore because
• 1:09:11
  Bill Barr is now on Trump's shit list, So therefore Bar's a bad guy,
• 1:09:16
  and my audience will now believe anything bad about Bill Barr. They just
• 1:09:21
  won't connect it to Donald Trump somehow. I mean again, like I said,
• 1:09:26
  you could, you could, You could literally write a book about what
• 1:09:30
  that clip says about why we are so broken and why we are so screwed,
• 1:09:34
  and frankly, also why it's going to be so basically impossible to beat
• 1:09:39
  Trump for the nomination because he can get away with anything, and here he
• 1:09:43
  is. I mean, it just doesn't get any funnier, more obvious than
• 1:09:47
  what I just played for you. I do want to mention with regard to
• 1:09:50
  Trump and as legal problems, I already referenced that as you are listening to
• 1:09:56
  this, my guess is that the if you listen on Thursday, that one
• 1:10:00
  of the top trending items on Twitter and one of the biggest news stories of
• 1:10:03
  the day will be the Trump mug shot, which is expected to be made
• 1:10:08
  public. This has never, of course happened. It's going to be historic.
• 1:10:11
  It's going to be unchartered territory, a former president with a mug shot.
• 1:10:15
  Because of the charges in Georgia. We may also find out what is
• 1:10:18
  true height and weight are. There's actually betting odds on what Trump's real height
• 1:10:24
  and weight are. This is an issue because a lot of people believe not
• 1:10:28
  without reason, that he and his doctors lied about that while he was president
• 1:10:32
  to keep him from being obese, and now he won't have control over that.
• 1:10:36
  So we'll find out hopefully more information on that, and I'll talk about
• 1:10:42
  in the next episode of the podcast. There are also some developments in the
• 1:10:47
  case in Florida, and this is the case of the classified documents, and
• 1:10:53
  you know, from a strictly legal standpoint, it seems to be the clearest
• 1:10:59
  cut case. It seems to be the most obvious case where Trump broke the
• 1:11:01
  law. Although I have argued that the audio tape there is not going to
• 1:11:05
  play well to a sympathetic jury because it doesn't sound like a crime is being
• 1:11:11
  committed. But just on the letter of the law, it does appear that
• 1:11:14
  that's the most open and shot case and it also involves apparently a cover up
• 1:11:19
  when it comes to deleting security camera footage at maral Lago. And the big
• 1:11:26
  story the last few days is that a tech person at maral Lago has recanted
• 1:11:32
  previously untruthful testimony to the grand jury and has gotten a new lawyer. And
• 1:11:41
  what that essentially means is they've flipped on Trump and even Jonathan Turley, who's
• 1:11:45
  been very very pro Trump, the George Washington liberal law professor that Fox News
• 1:11:51
  Channel loves because he generally kisses Trump's ass on these legal issues, he has
• 1:11:56
  been most outspoken on this case. A big problem for Trump, and he
• 1:12:01
  tweeted out that this is very ominous for Trump that you have now a key
• 1:12:08
  person seemingly flipping on Donald Trump when it comes to the cover up. And
• 1:12:12
  in a normal case, I would agree that this is really really bad news
• 1:12:17
  for Donald Trump. However, this is not a normal case. And because
• 1:12:24
  this is going to be tried, assuming it ever is in southern Florida,
• 1:12:28
  you know, in a place where Trump is very well known. It's not
• 1:12:31
  the not the trumpiest portion of Florida, but it's an area of Florida that
• 1:12:36
  has a lot of Trump supporters. You're gonna have a jury pool that has
• 1:12:41
  at least thirty percent strong Trump supporters and at least ten percent Trump cult members.
• 1:12:49
  I mean, that's worst case scenario. And the Trump lawyers are going
• 1:12:56
  to be very focused and it is going to be very easy to choose jurors.
• 1:13:01
  I mean, all they need is two, three, four jurors that
• 1:13:04
  fit that description in that jury of twelve people, and there's no way Trump
• 1:13:12
  is getting convicted of anything. There is no way if he is the front
• 1:13:16
  runner or the presumptive Republican nominee. I mean, if I'm Trump, I
• 1:13:21
  want this thing. That's the case I want tried first. If I'm Donald
• 1:13:27
  Trump's lawyers, i want this case tried immediately, because One, I'm going
• 1:13:34
  to be viable as the presidential candidate for sure. Two, it's really the
• 1:13:41
  Republican voter is not going to see any damage in what was done based upon
• 1:13:45
  what we currently know, no matter how against the letter of the law it
• 1:13:47
  is. But most importantly, number three, the jurors are gonna come to
• 1:13:51
  my defense. That pro Trump jurors are going to realize that, you know,
• 1:13:57
  the next president of the United States may hinge on them keeping me out
• 1:14:00
  of jail, not to mention, they really like me personally. And number
• 1:14:05
  four, when they hang in there for a hung jury, I'm going to
• 1:14:10
  be able to declare victory. And declaring victory on the first of the indictments
• 1:14:14
  is incredibly powerful, incredibly powerful, especially from a political standpoint. So I
• 1:14:23
  am of the opinion that the facts and the law and the evidence ain't gonna
• 1:14:29
  matter in the Florida case. It's not gonna matter as long as Trump is
• 1:14:34
  the presumptive Republican presidential nominee or the nominee himself. If he's president, none
• 1:14:42
  of this matters. Because it's a federal case. He'll get rid of it
• 1:14:44
  immediately. But if this happens in twenty twenty four, it's gonna be a
• 1:14:49
  hung jury unless the Trump lawyers do a terrible job of getting Trump supporters on
• 1:14:56
  the jury itself, and they're gonna have plenty of people to choose from.
• 1:15:00
  And so I just don't believe this is a very unique situation. I don't
• 1:15:05
  think the facts, the law, the evidence matters at all in this case.
• 1:15:10
  And I see so little coverage of this in the news media, and
• 1:15:14
  everyone's just pretending that somehow this is going to be a normal case. This
• 1:15:16
  is not going to be a normal case. This is all about jury selection.
• 1:15:21
  He's the most divisive man in the history of the country. Probably there's
• 1:15:27
  never been anyone more loved and more hated, at least in modern times.
• 1:15:31
  And I can think of simultaneously than Donald Trump. And there's just no way
• 1:15:38
  you're gonna be able to get twelve people in southern Florida on a jury when
• 1:15:43
  you got you know, Trump's lawyers fighting tooth and now to prevent this from
• 1:15:46
  happening that don't like Donald Trump. It's just not statistically possible. And so
• 1:15:53
  unless there's evidence that that's happened, I'm not even gonna worry about the actual
• 1:15:56
  evidence in that case because it's gonna be hung jury and Trump is going to
• 1:15:59
  declare victory. That's the reality of it. And so I don't really consider
• 1:16:04
  the Florida case to be all that significant. In fact, I think it
• 1:16:09
  has the greatest potential to help Donald Trump for the reasons that I just gave.
• 1:16:13
  I do want to mention, since this is the Death of Journalism podcast,
• 1:16:16
  I do want to mention one other political story involving Ron de Santis,
• 1:16:20
  and this did not get a lot of play, but it just goes to
• 1:16:24
  show one of the things that I have been talking about from the beginning about
• 1:16:28
  why the De Santis campaign was at such a disadvantage, and that is how
• 1:16:33
  everybody is incentivized to go after Ron de Santis, especially his former classmates.
• 1:16:40
  I'm pretty sure I referenced this a long time ago. I kind of anticipated
• 1:16:45
  as being a bigger deal and if he won the nomination in a general election,
• 1:16:48
  but having gone to Yale and Harvard is really bad news for ron de
• 1:16:53
  Santis. We saw this with Brett Kavanaugh. You remember when the vlasi Ford
• 1:16:59
  b As allegation happened. What happened right after that, Ronan Pharaoh went to
• 1:17:04
  old classmates from Yale. They came up with a bullshit story that was obviously
• 1:17:09
  an urban legend. Why because you have thousands of people, almost all of
• 1:17:15
  whom are liberals, who are very prominent people, very powerful people, and
• 1:17:20
  the media considers to be inherently credible because they went to Harvard or Yale.
• 1:17:26
  If they went to some state school, the media wouldn't give a shit.
• 1:17:29
  But oh, they went to Harvard or Yale. They're inherently credible, they're
• 1:17:32
  inherently smart, they're probably successful, they have things to lose if if they're
• 1:17:38
  lying, Why would they lie? Well, because they're liberals, and because
• 1:17:43
  you know, we've seen what happened with regard to Blasi Forth, that story
• 1:17:45
  was I believe completely made up as an urban legend fostered by Ronan Pharaoh against
• 1:17:53
  Brett Cavanaugh. Well, we had a classic example of this in Business Insider.
• 1:17:57
  This is a real headline from Business Insider. I cannot believe this is
• 1:18:00
  real. I had to check it three times because it seems fake. But
• 1:18:04
  this is Business Insider, a legitimate news organization with the headline. A fellow
• 1:18:11
  Yale Secret Society member said ron Des Sanders rolled his eyes when she talked about
• 1:18:18
  her upbringing as a Hispanic girl in Texas. Quote, it was like I
• 1:18:26
  wasn't worth listening to. That's an actual headline about the second leading Republican presidential
• 1:18:34
  candidate for president. I want to repeat this because it's just so batshit crazy.
• 1:18:40
  A fellow Yale Secret Society member. By the way, this is you
• 1:18:45
  know, twenty some years ago. A fellow Yale Secret Society member said Ron
• 1:18:50
  de Sanders rolled his eyes when she talked about her upbringing as a Hispanic girl
• 1:18:58
  in Texas. It was like I wasn't worth listening to, as if even
• 1:19:02
  presuming that the story is true, that he rolled his eyes, as if
• 1:19:05
  there's no other reason for someone to roll their eyes when someone is telling a
• 1:19:12
  story, then for it to somehow be either racist and or sexist against a
• 1:19:16
  Hispanic girl in Texas or from Texas, it's just It's absolutely ridiculous, it's
• 1:19:24
  absurd, And you know this is from the same media that you know will
• 1:19:28
  tell you that Donald Trump's nomination is a grave threat to democracy, when,
• 1:19:32
  by the way, many mainstream media outlet members from outlets that are very anti
• 1:19:39
  Trump, prepared for the Republican debate by going to a state dinner with Trump
• 1:19:45
  surrogates to spin them on how to cover the debate, and it actually seemed
• 1:19:50
  to work. Dana Bash, who was part of this this dinner with the
• 1:19:57
  fellow mainstream media members with the Trump surrogates, came out and immediately was talking
• 1:20:02
  about how, you know, it's possible that the Republican Debate and I might
• 1:20:06
  not do as well in the ratings as the Tucker Carlson interview, which by
• 1:20:11
  the way, might be true. But this is why you don't do those
• 1:20:14
  kind of things, because then it seems like you've been bought off, it
• 1:20:16
  seems like you have a conflict of interest. But most importantly, how is
• 1:20:20
  it that these mainstream media outlet members are treating the Trump campaign as if it's
• 1:20:26
  a normal campaign. We've been told by them constantly that this is not normal,
• 1:20:31
  this is unprecedented. He's a threat to democracy. Well, why aren't
• 1:20:34
  they acting that way. Well, they're not acting that way because they all
• 1:20:38
  want him to be the nominee. And by the way, I want to
• 1:20:41
  make something clear, Yes, they want him to be the nominee because they
• 1:20:45
  think he's beatable by Joe Biden. Although there's some polls that are bringing that
• 1:20:48
  in the question, I still am confident that that's the case. Barring massive
• 1:20:53
  black swan events, which are possible. I'm not saying it's one hundred percent
• 1:20:56
  that he would lose the Biden, but he would be a heavy underdog to
• 1:20:59
  Biden. Might get crushed depending on how things worked out. But here's the
• 1:21:02
  real incentive that nobody is talking about when it comes to the media and Trump
• 1:21:08
  being the nominee. If Trump is the nominee, and even if he's the
• 1:21:14
  president, then all of a sudden, these four indictments, all of which
• 1:21:19
  are trying to become trials in twenty twenty four, become ratings magnets, all
• 1:21:29
  four of them. There's nothing the media loves more referenced it previously. The
• 1:21:34
  holy grail is the OJ Simpson case. There's nothing the media loves more than
• 1:21:40
  a high profile trial and having the Republican nominee or presumptive nominee undergo a trial,
• 1:21:48
  whether it's in federal court or even better for them, Georgia, because
• 1:21:51
  then it can be on television. For sure, that's manner from heaven.
• 1:21:57
  But if he's not the nominee all of a sudden, it's nowhere near as
• 1:22:01
  big a deal. If somehow, you know, Trump would have been knocked
• 1:22:05
  out or dropped out or whatever, then all of a sudden, while his
• 1:22:10
  trial was still a story, it's not o j But if you get if
• 1:22:15
  you get the Georgia case in the middle of an elector general election where the
• 1:22:20
  Republican nominee along with the eighteen of his cohorts, are on a televised trial,
• 1:22:28
  that's going to be huge. That is going to be huge. That
• 1:22:30
  is year making stuff for a news media whose business model was totally broken.
• 1:22:39
  And so this is the biggest conflict of interest that nobody is talking about.
• 1:22:43
  When it comes to the media. They have a huge incentive for Trump to
• 1:22:46
  be the nominee, not just because of what it means for Biden, what
• 1:22:50
  it means for them because having Trump is the nominee on trial is gold.
• 1:23:00
  It's absolute gold. From the ratings and content perspective, and that's all they
• 1:23:03
  really care about. I've been talking a lot about the rebirth of COVID and
• 1:23:09
  how the minds of the Santa's campaign may have played a role in that,
• 1:23:13
  at least subconsciously. I talked about that in episode eighty two. There was
• 1:23:16
  another many examples of that, but one I wanted to point out in particular.
• 1:23:21
  CNN put out a tweet just yesterday. If you're at high risk of
• 1:23:27
  serious illness or death from COVID nineteen, which by the way, you're in
• 1:23:30
  a very very very very small group of people at this point, it's time
• 1:23:34
  to dust off those and ninety five masks according to a growing number of experts,
• 1:23:43
  Jesus fucking Christ. So basically, we made no progress in three plus
• 1:23:48
  years, according to a growing number of experts. You mean, the people
• 1:23:54
  that have been wrong for three plus years about masks. And it's a growing
• 1:23:58
  number of experts. Because these people are invested in the idea that they weren't
• 1:24:02
  wrong the first time. They love being quoted that. The reason why they're
• 1:24:06
  experts is because the media loves what they say. I mean, this is
• 1:24:09
  a symbiotic relationship. It's a scam is what it is. The quote unquote
• 1:24:15
  experts are chosen because of their opinions that are going to match what the media
• 1:24:19
  outlet wants the narrative to be. The idea that we're talking about dusting off
• 1:24:25
  end ninety five masks because of an alleged either theoretical or potential surge and a
• 1:24:31
  new variant of COVID is just so it's mind blowing, even to me,
• 1:24:36
  even as pessimistic as I am, as doomsday is as I am, even
• 1:24:42
  I thought we had done better than this, Even I thought we had made
• 1:24:45
  more progress than this. And my only explanation is that this is the cost
• 1:24:49
  of the Santis's campaign being perceived as flamming out. That's what it is.
• 1:24:54
  And by the way, I am so right about what they are going to
• 1:24:57
  do with the COVID president and turning it into climate emergencies, global warming emergencies.
• 1:25:03
  In fact, there's been a couple of stories out this week that the
• 1:25:08
  Biden administration is contemplating doing exactly that headline in the Blaze, Biden may declare
• 1:25:14
  a national climate emergency to further the Green New Deal by non democratic means quote
• 1:25:21
  just like covid ue. There it is bum bum bum g. I wonder,
• 1:25:30
  I wonder if anyone had warned us that this was going to happen,
• 1:25:34
  boil boy. I just wish someone would have done so. Yeah, a
• 1:25:39
  lot of us did, and I was one of them, because it was
• 1:25:42
  as obvious as day. And it's not conspiratorial. It's the way these people
• 1:25:45
  think. It's the way they worked. And when they got away with it
• 1:25:47
  with COVID, they realized that the path was wide open on climate and they
• 1:25:53
  can do way more permanent damage on climate because that's a problem that's never gone
• 1:25:58
  away. That's a problem that's never ever gonna go away because they've created a
• 1:26:03
  metrics where it's impossible for it to go away. They try to do that
• 1:26:06
  with COVID, but eventually even the stats were like, there's no COVID left,
• 1:26:12
  No one's really dying's, no one's really getting it anymore. You know,
• 1:26:16
  they had forced the vaccines down our arms, and people were tired of
• 1:26:20
  it. But they have created the rules for interpretation on climate that make it
• 1:26:29
  impossible because now they've been able to weaponize summertime, they've been able to weaponize
• 1:26:36
  basic weather. I mean, it's unbelievable. The number of stories I see
• 1:26:42
  to this day where every every heat related records all of a sudden sign of
• 1:26:46
  global warming climate change, when records are always broken because we have a very
• 1:26:53
  small database of records, and we have thousands of climates microclimates around the world.
• 1:27:00
  As I always say, statistically, at any given time, with all
• 1:27:05
  those that large number of different climates, you're gonna have something weird happening.
• 1:27:10
  You're gonna have something outside the norm. And that's why they call it climate
• 1:27:14
  change now instead of global warming, so that they can always say, well,
• 1:27:17
  you know, this is never ill. They haven't had a tropical storm
• 1:27:20
  in southern California eighty four years. It was actually good for the drought and
• 1:27:25
  wildfires this fall. No one's going to tell you that. And by the
• 1:27:29
  way, it happened eighty four years ago, what was the global warming then
• 1:27:32
  causing it? No, some things are just unusual, not that unusual,
• 1:27:38
  since eighty four years in the scope of the climate of the globe is a
• 1:27:42
  blink of an eyelash. But you know, because we are so myopic when
• 1:27:46
  it comes to human experience, we think that eighty four years is an extremely
• 1:27:50
  long time because that's basically more than the average lifespan. Well, that's irrelevant
• 1:27:57
  to climate science. But we're dealing with dumb people here, and the media
• 1:28:01
  is more than willing to play along. And it would not surprise me at
• 1:28:04
  all Biden went for this even in an election here. Now, if he
• 1:28:09
  does it, I hope he does it soon, because I do think it
• 1:28:11
  could theoretically provide a resuscitation of the De Santis campaign, at least in the
• 1:28:16
  Republican primary. But I care more about the country at this point. I
• 1:28:20
  don't want to see this because I don't know how you get rid of it.
• 1:28:24
  I really don't know how you get rid of it if it ever gets
• 1:28:26
  started, especially when I think we're looking down the barrel of thirteen more years
• 1:28:30
  of Biden and Harris being president of the United States. I do want to
• 1:28:33
  mention, and I've already referenced it, and you might have thought I forgot
• 1:28:36
  about it, but the first question at the Republican debate last night was really
• 1:28:44
  odd, and it's about a subject that I wanted to talk about before I
• 1:28:48
  even started to watch the debate, and that is the meteoric rise of singer
• 1:28:54
  songwriter Oliver Anthony. And you probably know who Oliver Anthony is now he's the
• 1:29:00
  guy who is topped the charts with a series of songs. But the first
• 1:29:03
  one is called Richmond North of Richmond, and you know, he's a guy
• 1:29:10
  with a red, bushy beard, and you know he's clearly a rural guy,
• 1:29:15
  man of the people. The song is very much like that. And
• 1:29:19
  bizarrely, the Fox News Channel debate team began the questioning of the candidates not
• 1:29:28
  just with a reference to Oliver Anthony, but they actually played a clip from
• 1:29:33
  Richmond North of Richmond. And the really weird part of this is they played
• 1:29:38
  a clip with the words shit in it. I mean, I don't know
• 1:29:44
  if this was a mistake, but it's got to be the first time in
• 1:29:46
  the history of presidential debates, at least on television, that the word shit
• 1:29:51
  was used on purpose, or maybe the first time it's ever been used period.
• 1:29:57
  And they used it as a way to kick off the debate by asking
• 1:30:00
  Ronda Santis why the song is so popular. Now, look, I don't
• 1:30:08
  think that that's a completely inappropriate question for debate, but the very first question
• 1:30:15
  of the of the guy who's doing best in the polls, the guy who
• 1:30:19
  was the most winner lose in this debate Ron de Santis. I thought it
• 1:30:24
  was a bit unfair to the Santist. Now, the Santis's response was very
• 1:30:30
  substantive about the economy and middle class, and there was nothing wrong with it,
• 1:30:34
  except it was a bit too energetic. He seemed to be a bit
• 1:30:38
  too jazzed up for me, especially given the nature the subject, where I
• 1:30:43
  think it basically begged for more empathetic answer about trying to relate. It begged
• 1:30:48
  for a real world experience dealing with somebody, you know, in the middle
• 1:30:54
  class or lower middle class who's struggling to make ends meet and can relate to
• 1:30:59
  the song, you know. But he wasn't prepared, and given the nature
• 1:31:03
  of the circumstances he did find it wasn't wasn't a terrible response. It just
• 1:31:08
  wasn't great. And at this point you're gonna need greatness if you're gonna come
• 1:31:12
  back from forty points down against against Donald Trump. But the part of the
• 1:31:15
  Oliver Anthony thing that I really find weird and a bit fascinating is having listened
• 1:31:24
  to his songs, it's so obvious that he is not a Republican. It's
• 1:31:30
  so obvious that he's probably not a Trump supporter. There's some indication he voted
• 1:31:35
  for Biden in twenty twenty And I really do believe that if Oliver Anthony had
• 1:31:45
  released this song in say twenty fourteen, twenty fifteen, before Trump changed the
• 1:31:49
  world and changed the Republican Party, I don't think that Oliver Anthony would be
• 1:31:55
  anything close to a household name today. Forget about the fact that it hits
• 1:31:59
  a chord because of the nature of the economy and inflation and the hatred of
• 1:32:01
  Washington and all that. The reality is that Oliver Anthony has written this wave
• 1:32:10
  much like Sound of Freedom did, which is weird because the Sound of Freedom
• 1:32:13
  in the movie with Jim Caviezel, is not an overtly conservative movie, but
• 1:32:16
  it was conservatives that were largely driving or Republicans that were largely driving the success
• 1:32:23
  of Sound of Freedom. Well, it's all online. It was almost entirely
• 1:32:27
  Trump supporters and Republicans who were promoting and sharing this out of nowhere viral video
• 1:32:36
  and music clip from Oliver Anthony. And when you look at the substance or
• 1:32:43
  listen to the substance of the songs, I'm telling you, before Trump came
• 1:32:47
  along and change the world, Republicans would have looked at this guy as a
• 1:32:51
  bleeding heart liberal. First of all, he looks like a bleeding heart liberal,
• 1:32:56
  the bushy red beard, and my experience has always been a dead giveaway
• 1:32:59
  of a bleeding heart liberal. I mean, I used to joke with my
• 1:33:01
  high school social studies teacher that had a bushy red beard. I used to
• 1:33:05
  joke with him all the time. I knew you were liberal the moment you
• 1:33:08
  walked in, because you got a bushy red beard. He thought that was
• 1:33:11
  hilarious. And I've noticed it ever since, all those years since, and
• 1:33:15
  I don't think I've ever met somebody with a bushy red beard who was a
• 1:33:18
  conservative. And Oliver Anthony is not a conservative now. That doesn't make him
• 1:33:24
  a bad guy. Doesn't mean the songs are bad. I just find it
• 1:33:28
  very odd that he's now become such a political figure that he's being used at
• 1:33:32
  the start of the Republican presidential debate. He probably thinks this is as strange
• 1:33:36
  as anybody, but he's also thrilled that it's happened, because he's ridden his
• 1:33:41
  wave to instant fame and fortune. Weirdly, liberals now automatically see him as
• 1:33:47
  a bad guy because Republicans are embracing him, but his message is darned near
• 1:33:54
  socialistic if you'll listen to it carefully. And so we're just living in this
• 1:33:59
  upside down world where this guy becomes instantaneously rich and famous because of quote unquote
• 1:34:05
  conservatives, when it's clear this guy is at at best, from at best,
• 1:34:12
  depending on your perspective, at best a political moderate who leans left.
• 1:34:16
  And like I said before, Trump would have absolutely been perceived by the average
• 1:34:23
  Republican as a lefty, you know. And by the way, I happen
• 1:34:28
  to like songs done by lefties. You know. Harry Chapin is one of
• 1:34:31
  my all time favorites folk singer from the from the nineteen seventies. My mother
• 1:34:38
  loved Harry Chapman. She was more conservative than I am, and she got
• 1:34:43
  me into Harry Chapin. And I you know, I have all of his
• 1:34:45
  greatest hits and I've listened to him dozens and dozens of times. You know.
• 1:34:50
  One of his songs is probably the anthem of my life, The Rock.
• 1:34:55
  You go listen to the Rock if you ever want that. That's the
• 1:34:58
  story of my life, is the story of the Rock. The last episode
• 1:35:02
  of this podcast will probably play Harry Chapman's The Rock because it really does tell
• 1:35:08
  that much of the story of my life, at least the later stages of
• 1:35:11
  my life and career. But Harry Chapman was as liberal as they get,
• 1:35:15
  old school liberal. I would I often think, what would Harry Chapman think
• 1:35:18
  about today? Because you know, he was an old school superlib. But
• 1:35:24
  even I believe that even Harry would have looked around at today's liberals and gone,
• 1:35:29
  what the fuck is this all about? Because these people have lost their
• 1:35:32
  goddamn minds. So all the rules are changing, all the standards are changing.
• 1:35:36
  All it's impossible to identity. You can't even identify what's a man and
• 1:35:41
  what's a woman anymore, so identifying a liberal and conservatives is, I guess,
• 1:35:45
  nearly impossible. But so I have nothing against liberal folks singers. I
• 1:35:49
  often like liberal folks singers. I wish there were more of them. It's
• 1:35:53
  better than the crap that most modern music has become. But I find the
• 1:35:57
  Oliver Anthony phenomenon to be frankly hilarious and a real indication of how screwed up
• 1:36:03
  things are politically in this country. That'll do it for this episode of the
• 1:36:08
  Death of Journalism podcast. Once again, thanks to Mike Agavino for getting this
• 1:36:12
  out much more quickly than would normally be the case given our new or different
• 1:36:16
  schedule because of the Republican Debate, and allowing me to do the podcast episode
• 1:36:21
  after the Republican Debate on Wednesday evening. Next week, we'll go back on
• 1:36:27
  our normal schedule, which is to be out on early Tuesday and early Thursday.
• 1:36:30
  Until next time. Please remember to subscribe, rate, and review and
• 1:36:33
  share this podcast. If you share it on social media, please make sure
• 1:36:38
  to tag me and I'll share it with my followers on Twitter and my friends
• 1:36:41
  on Facebook. Once again, thanks so much for listening. This is the
• 1:36:44
  Death of Journalism podcast. My name is John Zickler.